The Rise and Fall of Google's Computational Photography Efforts

Google was crushing it 5 years ago with their auto awesome feature, which used AI techniques to automatically remove wrinkles, whiten teeth, and more. However, recently, Google has fallen back, and while they still have a top-notch camera, the question remains: what happened? The answer lies in the fact that Apple innovates at the underlying hardware level, simply updating the software as needed.

This is not a recent phenomenon; it's been happening for years. Apple doesn't have to contend with the same constraints as Android manufacturers, which can lead to varying degrees of quality and consistency across different devices. Google's Pixel camera, on the other hand, has consistently received high praise from critics and users alike, earning top scores in various reviews and ratings.

DXOmark, a leading review website for camera equipment, scores cameras based on a range of factors, including resolution, dynamic range, color accuracy, and more. The results can be telling, with some devices excelling in certain areas but not others. For example, the Pixel 4 has received high marks for its camera's ability to capture detailed images, especially in low-light conditions.

Google's Senior Vice President of Social Networking Services, Gandotra, was a key player in shaping the company's photography efforts. Under his leadership, Google+ and Go+ Photos were developed to make sharing photos easier than ever. One notable feature was the auto-album creation tool, which could automatically generate photo albums based on events and people involved.

This was a groundbreaking feature at the time, but it's hard to find out what Google has been working on since then. Some speculate that the company is exploring Android's private source option, which could potentially alter the platform in significant ways. However, others believe that Google's focus will remain on improving their existing operating system.

One thing is certain: when it comes to photography, Apple's iPhone remains a top contender. The device's camera capabilities are unparalleled, and users can often find better results with even the most basic camera app. Portrait mode, in particular, has been praised for its ability to produce stunning, cinematic images without requiring significant technical expertise.

For those who prefer Android, Google's Pixel devices have become the go-to choice. However, the question remains: what sets these phones apart from others in the market? While some may argue that it's just a matter of personal preference or access to better apps and software features, there's a growing consensus among photography enthusiasts that the Pixel series is simply better.

The shift towards Apple's iPhone is not limited to casual photographers. Some Android users have switched to iPhones, citing the superior camera experience as a key factor in their decision. Google, meanwhile, continues to innovate, albeit at a slower pace than its competitors. As we look ahead to future developments, one thing is clear: computational photography will remain a driving force behind smartphone cameras.

Wireless Carplay is another area of development that has been gaining attention in recent months. While the technology is still relatively new, it promises to revolutionize the way we interact with our vehicles on the road. We'll be diving into this topic in more detail in a future episode, as I prepare to install a wireless carplay head unit in my own vehicle.

For now, that's all for this week's episode of The Apple Insider Podcast. Thank you to everyone who joined us and shared their thoughts and opinions on the latest developments in the world of technology. Don't forget to reach out to us with any questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes. Until next time, stay curious and keep exploring!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to this the 132nd episode of Apple insiders podcast I'm your host Victor marks and joining me is Neil Hughes Victor how are you I'm brilliant Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft that company of companies that that leader among leaders has an accessory for the Apple iPad did you want to start off with this story I mean we have a lot of other stuff to cover well this is Microsoft Insider yeah right let's just lead with this one quickly okay go ahead we're always interested in things that stem from leaked information or otherwise surprising and Microsoft making an accessory for an Apple product is particularly surprising because it wasn't so many years ago that you would be shunned for carrying an Apple device on the Microsoft campus now those days have have changed those days are gone especially with the uh what what happened to Microsoft zoom and when what happened to the Windows Phone products for example but it's still a little surprising that the Microsoft website shows a touch cover keyboard suitable for Apple's iPad now the touch cover is is an accessory that's commonly been sold with the Microsoft Surface ever since the surface began even with the Surface RT it's it's hard to know if this is something that's forthcoming or if it was a scrapped project um but it's mentioned on a page listing products that have integrated lithium batteries included the inclusion of the battery inside a Microsoft touch cover for iPad would suggest that the keyboard accessory is Bluetooth and is of course battery powered because it doesn't sync over the SMART connector Port you know the the touch cover is is sort of a 3mm thick keyboard usually uh and it it frequently is either a keyboard or a keyboard with a mouse and I think the only time I've seen it is the touch cover has a mouse integrated and a trackpad integrated to it right so that's also interesting because there is no trackpad for an iPad right kind of a weird thing so this is interesting I I like it I I don't know that this will ever see the light of day you got to understand that the way Microsoft develops products is very different from Apple uh Microsoft is a huge corporation that uh operates kind of in these uh weird silos and things will get very close to coming to Market and then get scrapped at the last minute um as evidenced a couple years ago when uh there was leaked information about the Surface Mini and like even like a manual for the product was was made and everything and I guess it was like ready to go and Microsoft said no we're not going to make that and they ended up scrapping it so it's very possible that they dabbled with this idea of a touch cover and got through the entire process of getting it certified and all that kind of stuff and then just decided not to do it and some remnant of it lingers on Microsoft's website but it was discovered this week um that uh it was on a page listing products with integrated lithium batteries on Microsoft site just like uh uh the necessary stuff that you have to list legally for those types of products it was mentioned on there that's compliance kind of thing compliance yeah for a touch cover design for the iPad so interesting it's an interesting future I mean we've had we've seen for years that Apple's had collaborations and strong relationships with Microsoft whether it was the influx of cash that Bill Gates was a part of announcing at Boston maor years ago right 1997 1998 time frame uh or the browser for Mac OS 10 initially was Internet Explorer for Mac right carried over as a carbon Port from OS 9 from system 9 UM whether it was it was the continued support of Office Mac right MH and the apps on iOS that that Microsoft and Apple have this sort of pushpull relationship yeah I mean uh you think about uh when office came to the iPad um and you know now you can get it on your iPhone too uh that was a big change for Microsoft and a lot of the features and and and capabilities came to uh came to iPad before it came to surface so um it's interesting that you know Microsoft's strategy on these things can can be very different depending on the product in some ways they integrate very well with Apple products and in some ways they don't so it wouldn't be a shock to see them release this keyboard for the iPad um I think it would be interesting I would rather it be a SMART connector keyboard um just because yes but that's because you'd rather everything be using the spark connector I want to keep my iPad as thin as possible so having an extra bulk of a battery seems unnecessary to me a better question is why has no one taken advantage of the SMART connector in in force why why are there so few things out there that work with it that's a good question the only company that is compatible at the moment is uh uh Logitech outside of apple and we don't really know why uh we don't know if it's licensing or if Apple just doesn't even allow companies to license it I I wonder if it's also because that connector is available on three skes right it could be a limited market hard to say that were the connector that were available on every iPhone for example be a different story yes there'd be a lot more uptake for it wouldn't you say absolutely yeah we we talk about anecdotally Apple being a very big company and being a very profitable company and having a large amount of cash on hand um we talked about this the other week when we were talking about where it fell on fortuns profitability and revenue listings right mhm we we have the third quarter sales call report mhm Apple declared that they sold 4.29 million macintoshes M and that's up from last year yeah it's not up a lot but it's up right and I want to put this in a context right the the computer sales and you know unit sales I think are also down everyone else that's in the business of selling personal computers has been making less money for them and selling fewer units would you agree correct and so for Apple to hold even or increase is is important to note because it's in context of everyone else falling away and they're retaining that share yeah apple has outpaced the market even in even in quarters where they've uh seen a year-over-year decline their year-over-year decline was less than the large Market I think in every quarter except for one within like the last decade it's been going on for a long time um so you know this trend continues um apple has a segment of the market that it continues to grow um whereas the rest of the market uh on the low end is being besieged by phones and cheap tablets and Apple's iPad yeah and historically the third quarter is kind of a Down quarter anyway the fourth quarter is the quarter that a lot of sales happen yes yeah this quarter was a little different this year because we saw um some new products come in June at WWDC um and then we also had the low-end iPad refresh in March so this was the first full quarter of sales of that so if there was any big surprise this quarter it was the iPad um sales were 11.4 million in the quarter uh and this is the first time in four years that iPad sales grew year-over-year um after getting off to a really hot start uh back in 2010 and and growing for three years they've been on the decline a slow decline ever since and general the consensus on that is that uh people just they like their iPads they just use them for a long time and so a lot of people that own an iPad 2 or an iPad Air1 didn't feel really compelled to upgrade to some of the ones that have come out in recent years um and it's believed that the uh low-end $330 iPad uh is really what May the unit sales go up this time but interestingly the average selling price is about the same so that means that the high-end iPad Pros are also selling okay I I I agree with this narrative I think that this is the first time that we've had a compelling iPad the that is at a lower price than they traditionally have been right much lower right for the for the entry model at any rate and and also for the more expensive storage models so you have something that's much more affordable and is a very capable iPad very so between that and your choices are very simply would you like the iPad or would you like the iPad Pro and the price difference between them is huge so it's not and the price difference is huge so it's an easy choice to make yeah if you go to the store and you see your options you know you're not going to be Heming and Hauling about which one should I get I think that you either know whether you want the pro or not and I think for the vast majority of people the entry level one is more than enough and if you really wanted a keyboard you could get a Bluetooth one yeah if you want the pro you want the Pro because you want the pencil right that's that's why you're buying the pr because you want to use the pencil I mean there are other reasons to buy the pro but for the most part yeah I agree that that's one of the things that helps you differentiate them correct and larger screens and larger screens but you know you look at that and it's the same thing that Apple's been doing other product lineups as well uh the iPhone has the SE and the 7 and the 7 plus um and then we're going to get even more layers uh this fall uh the iPad it's very clearly you know lined up between the entry level model and and the pro model and the entry level model we talked about this a few times in the past few months apple is getting more affordable than ever while they're also getting more expensive than ever and it's a good thing because they're addressing two very different segments of the market if you want an iPad it's cheaper than ever to get one right now it's affordable you can get one and it's a great product and if you want a really capable iPad you can get one but it's more expensive than it's ever been um so I I think that that's good for everybody honestly I think that the iPhone SE um and the iPhone 7 plus uh playing to different two different ends of the market are absolutely fantastic ideas and I think that it ensures that anybody that wants to get in uh can do so and it gives Apple the ability to kind of trickle down technology with newer devices and then eventually it'll make its way elsewhere as they've done for years across product platforms I keep going back to the product Matrix you remember way back at the dawn of time there was a simple for Quadrant repetitive uh Matrix right and it consisted of a power book a power Mac an iBook and an iMac right right and within those you had different levels different equipment right you could buy the iMac or the iMac DV for example or you could get the uh two different variations of the iBook one had a fire wire Port right right or you could get uh a couple different flavors of powermac within each one of those so so you had the four main product segments and then within those you or categories within those you had three more options right and since that time to now the past let's say 17 years we've seen the product and Matrix the the offering uh of these different categories explode with different types of machines and then with additional options among those machines right right to the point where people say it's no longer simple it's overly complex to try and choose among them and I think that's partly what happened with with iPad sales is that not only were there a bunch of devices that were perfectly suitable for the for a 3year period right but that there was also you were spoiled for choice you had had way too much to choose from and when you have too many options you get paralyzed I think that's a bad thing that came out of the iPod era for Apple uh you know the iPad was obviously a runaway success and they made multiple versions of it and continued to sell them for years and and they all served very different purposes and yet uh sometimes stepped on each other's toes as well you know the iPod Classic stayed around for a while but as the iPod Touch went up in capacity it became less and less relevant uh the clip on iPod Nano uh competed directly with the iPod Shuffle um you know I I think that um maybe I think you're right but Apple's made a concerted effort in the last few years to really simplify the product lineups and I think that the iPhone and iPad are great examples of that and the newer products too like the Apple watch um are pretty good examples of that um especially with the series 2 Apple watch you know you can get the S1 uh that doesn't have GPS and doesn't have the true waterproof you can get the S2 that has it or you can get a stainless steel or you can get the the ceramic and it's pretty clear you know the prices are are very different the features are clearly laid out um you know aside from choosing between a S1 and an S2 uh on the Apple watch I think that you know it's pretty clear what what model that you're going to be able to afford or what you're going to want to get um and I think that that is maybe maybe the launch of the Apple watch helped encourage Apple to to simplify its product lineups as you've seen um the MacBook still needs some work just because the Legacy um 13-inch MacBook Pro remains part of the lineup but uh you've seen that effort on the iPad and and the iPhone and I think that they've done a pretty good job yeah the the 13-inch and the MacBook Air as well both exist for a price point basically basically the the MacBook Air is so they can hit that under $1,000 Mark um and the 12-in MacBook just isn't there yet um and then MacBook Pro is even more confusing because you can get the 13-in Legacy um you can get the 13 in with USBC without touch bar or you can get it with touch bar and then you go to the 15inch blah blah blah uh the Mac lineup is going to take some time just because new technology was introduced and apple can't get the price Downs price points down uh while maintaining their margins um but you're seeing especially inspired by what they did in the iPhone for years in just keeping Legacy models around um and just dropping the price on them uh that makes it a very easy way of just kind of keeping the routine you know pushing it down the lineup I still think that the iPhone could use some work just because the iPhone 6s is the mid-tier phone and it has the same processor as the iPhone SE um and then it was even worse a year ago when the iPhone 6 was the mid-tier phone and it had a slower processor than the iPhone SE um but you know hopefully we'll see what the what the picture is going to be this fall and into next year assuming they update the iPhone SE what they're going to do there but I think I think that the lineup right now with the iPad is very clearly laid out you have an entry level model um with a fast processor but if you want more horsepower pencil and keyboard capabilities you got to go with the pro and by making the 10.5 in model uh slightly larger than the 9.7 in uh they add more value to it and just make it even clearer in the in the differentiation and I think that you saw the market respond to it in a number of ways I think that not only the entry level model and the price point helping to drive sales but uh the pro being second second generation now um and people gravitating toward that because a lot of the story has been around that entry level model and rightfully so but when the average selling price of the iPad didn't budge um that says that a lot of people are buying Pros too definitely you know it's it's one of these things that are going to have to clean up with the lineup eventually because it's just paralyzing to to be able to try and buy what what are you going to buy for your kid for school right you know are you going to buy your kid an iPad or an iPad Pro or are you going to buy your kid a 12-in Mac or a 13in and which 13-in there's just a lot of choices there that make it very difficult to choose and and apple hasn't been content to just let the low-end models languish either the iPhone SE early this year had it storage doubled uh last year when the Apple Watch series 2 launched the um the series 1 uh uh model was given a faster proster because the first gy was just too slow at that point even though it came with a lower price so um they're not afraid to to add more value as they lower the prices as well I think that it's just a little bit more comp complex with the MacBook and it's going to take a few years I mean your logical progression there is to get rid of the MacBook Air and replace it with a 12-in Macbook but they need to be able to get that down to an under $11,000 price point and at that price then they won't have the touch touch bar are they going to bring the touch bar to the 12-in MacBook you know do they eventually phase out the non-touch bar MacBook Pro uh you know there's a lot of tough decisions for them to make there and it'll be interesting to see how they do that in the next few years 1.2 billion cumulative iPhones sold there were 40 .8 million sold um oh I'm sorry it was uh no last quarter was 41 million iPhones sold in the quarter um which was ahead of Market expectations um and the iPhone continues to perform very well I think that there were Lowered Expectations because the hype for the iPhone 8 is so great and Tim Cook even said in the last earnings call uh for the March quarter that they were seeing uh sales being suppressed a little more that this go around just because of so much hype for the iPhone 8 but uh clearly the iPhone uh 7 and and uh 7 plus are still performing well um and apple is still selling a boatload of iPhones the average selling price is up year on year mhm because the 7 plus is selling yep the 7 plus has a $20 premium over previous plus phones because of the dual camera and that also serves as an upsell which again goes back to us talking about Apple more clearly defining the different devices in their price point um the 7 plus has more of a reason to exist other than a larger screen and that is driving more people to buy the more expensive model so is there anything to be disappointed in here at all not really um I mean I think all around really good quarter and you're seeing Apple's stock respond accordingly uh you know the the the Mac sales um were were strong uh it will be interesting to see what they do going into back to school and uh and all that but you got to remember that the iMac the MacBook Pro the MacBook Air and the 12-in MacBook were all updated at WWDC so you know that's one of those things where perhaps it could have performed a little better than it did but it's still not a disappointing uh number I mean Mac sales were up over year over year they were up SE sequentially um I think that you know apple is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to Intel chips obviously there's a lot of people that think they should have a 32 gig ram option for the 15-inch MacBook Pro um there are you know rumors about some big changes coming to the MacBook Pro maybe next year um I think the more interesting thing there now is to see whether or not they can squeeze in another MacBook or any sort of Mac update this fall or whether the Mac lineup is going to stay the way it is until 2018 but all around a very strong quarter iPhone outperformed iPad way outperformed expectations the mac's doing well uh the Apple watch uh they said sales were up 50% last quarter year-over-year um so they still haven't given exact numbers of course on the Apple watch but it would seem that the watch is doing pretty well and I continue to see and do toally a lot of watches out in the wild so I think that the Apple watch is starting to catch on in a pretty meaningful way there have been some Market estimates that are putting it like you know sales at like two two two and a half to three million sales a quarter um the latest estimate that we had this week uh put it at 2.8 million watch units last quarter um I think that's pretty good um considering it's a iPhone only accessory uh I I think that I think that that is something to be pleased with overall the financials are very good and and the market responded accordingly but one of the things that it's important to point out is that um the the guidance for the next quarter the September quarter was also very strong um and that is another reason why investors are buying in big for Apple right now um after the earnings because uh the expectation has been that the iPhone might be delayed iPhone 8 specifically um and by delayed I mean later than usual you can't de delay a product that's never been announced with with a date and we're not talking about a significant we're talking about you know some Bank of America was saying September or was that JP Morgan Chase well September some other people have been saying November or October right right November or October is not a huge delay is it it's not but uh people are impatient and and customers are impatient and investors are impatient as well so there's a few things to to consider here first of all Apple usually launches its iPhones toward the end of the September quarter so they get a weekend of new iPhone sales in which are somewhere around 12 million to start for the launch weekend is where we're at now uh if they didn't hit it in the September quarter then analysts have to adjust accordingly and push those units back to the December quarter then there's a fear that maybe they can't produce enough in time because of a shortened window before Christmas so the sales might be hurt uh these are the concerns that analysts have I'm not saying that they're founded uh a lot of the analyst reaction has been that they're going to sell the iPhones whether they sell them this year or next year people are going to want them and I tend to agree with that but um the way that the guidance came out for Apple for next quarter gross margins down slightly uh Revenue coming in higher than people expected um the expectation is that they're going to be able to launch the iPhone 7S uh at the very least at the end of next quarter and potentially some limited iPhone 8 sales or maybe early October but the way that um the market is reading into the numbers that Apple put out uh it's looked like they're it looks like they are the very least going to start ramping up production for the iPhone 8 in the next quarter in September uh which would indicate that we probably don't have to wait until November for the phone I would say maybe a limited late September or early October launch um and then the question becomes how many can they manufacture with the expectation that the iPhone 8 might be a premium pro model with a high price um and keeping uh you know limited inventory because they can't produce enough because of new technology in it uh that's where it's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out out because it this is let's let's not mistake it let's not mince words here this is a gamble for Apple if this is what they're actually going to do because you run the risk of people looking at the iPhone 7S and saying that phone isn't that exciting I want that iPhone Pro that costs $1,200 and some of them might even say I I'm willing to pay the $1,200 for the iPhone Pro however there are none in the store so I'm going to wait and if this ends up being an airpods type of situation where here we are 10 months later and you still can't get them in the store what does that do for Apple's bottom line absolutely you you lost your airpods didn't you I didn't lose mine um I well I'll I'll put this out there as a PSA for people um the find my airpods feature that's built into find my iPhone it's pretty worthless um it's a nice gimmick um I think it was something done by Apple to address concerns of people that said what if I lose one of my airpods uh how will I find it um having said that uh don't depend on it to actually find anything uh my wife doesn't know where she lost her airpods um she was taking a train and then took a lift and she has contacted everybody uh to see if they fell out of her bag in the assorted vehicles that she took and it has not shown up we attempted to locate the last known location with find my airpods but uh it was actually showing um a couple days before was the last time it was connected even though that wasn't true because she knew that she had used it that day so the way that it works because obviously the airpods don't have built-in GPS or data so it's not like you could find or Wi-Fi for that matter or or Wi-Fi basically what will happen is when they're connected to your phone it will occasionally ping with the location of your phone to let you know the last place that it was connected to help you find them um and this is not something that I can ding Apple for because I don't know what else they could really do it's a nice feature to have and I'm glad that it's there but uh in the case of they update it more aggressively that's what they could do they could yeah I I mean I guess I I don't know I I think that um it's it's not particularly helpful um through my own stupidity I lost my Power Beats three uh I don't even know how he did that I think I think I may have uh uh left them in the in my pocket for the laundry or something and I have no idea where they are I been and find them so it's been a costly uh week for for me with lost headphones I'm like o but yeah so ps8 everybody if you don't rely too much on the my airpods like they have a feature that's nice that's um uh it'll play a noise through the earpiece to help you find them like a like a high-pitch noise but the problem is if your airpods are in the case that they come in then that covers up the sound so you can barely hear them it's muffled now if you just lose a straggle one like in the seat cushion or something or in your couch or whatever uh then that might help there but uh it it's a nice feature to have and I'm glad that they offer it but don't expect it to see save your bacon it is a problem keeping up with these things I I think technically they could update find my iPhone in and the uh you know Apple services and Cloud every time that you connect them to a phone or a device mhm but that doesn't help you if you connected them at your office and then they were lost in the cab on the way home yeah they weren't connected then yeah so there's I don't know what the good solution would be there um you know maybe a future air pods update could include a tiny embedded speaker in the in the charging case so that that could broadcast noise if you're missing it or something but other than that it's it's just one of those things where be more careful with your stuff at the end of the day there's no one to blame but us for lost having lost the headphones so everything needs to have a virtual Sim in it right and can then go ahead and use LTE or or you know internet of lost things yeah pretty much that's that's where we're heading but talking about data and connectivity you know in in weeks past we've reviewed a bunch of different Wi-Fi systems right you know we reviewed the uh the Euro Wi-Fi we had the Google Wi-Fi in for review we've had the ubic amplify system in for review and uh we just took receipt of the new ero version two right and you know they're all trying to solve this interesting problem um euro is is a single router Wi-Fi buy model you no that's that's not great let's stretch to the r euro is a distributed system right instead of buying single routers that are just one router you put in your home if you've got places that are bad coverage in your house buying a distributed system can help you overcome that so ero has the power to seamlessly blanket your home and fast reliable Wi-Fi and you can use ethernet Wireless or any combination um you set the the main unit on a flat surface you plug it into a wall outlet and it expands coverage in any room and they've got triband so trib band is in in the past we've had 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios in Wi-Fi systems right triband is the addition of a third 5 GHz radio what this does is that it increases the reliability in coverage that that you can say you've got 5 GHz for your gaming systems and your media players 5 GHz for your client computers and then 2.4 for legacy devices um it pretty much the the second generation ero is triband and twice as fast as its predecessor so you can do more in in every room in the house what's really interesting for me here is that the second generation ero added a thread radio you remember a year ago we were talking about Google thread yep so there's Google thread which is sort of it's It's a new protocol that Google came up with that they want to use to replace zigg and zwave particularly zigg and so Euro can connect to low power devices like locks doorbells and sensors and participate in a in a sort of home network based around Google thread that you know fits in with your light bulbs fits in with your your uh thermostat smoke alarms the whole thing and so your Wi-Fi can be a part of that it's it's an interesting concept and this is one of the first thread devices that I've seen that's going to get out there in widespread way that isn't one of those door lock kind of things mhm whichever model you choose eo's incredible customer support means you can get on a call and you can get a hold of a Wi-Fi expert within about 30 seconds the ero Beacon which is so it used to be that oo's devices were all the same You' open the box and youd see three units that looked the same and you just pick one and say that's the master unit right now they have one unit that looks identical to the first version outwardly but the two beacons the the accessory units are much smaller they're half the size but they're way more powerful than the original units and I've been doing some experimentation here and they they increase coverage and the app is incredibly simple to set up and it's it's not hard to customize either which is one of these things because there's always this challenge especially within networking of being able to customize and keeping it easy and ero really have have done the best balance of that that I've seen so far um it it really is good so for free overnight shipping you can visit ero.com and select overnight shipping as the option and enter crunchy at checkout that's e.com with offer code crunchy at the checkout Neil I'm excited about the homepod speaker are you I am you sound you're not you sound like you're not so excited I'm excited about it I I kind of want one yeah I want one I I I'm I already have AirPlay all over my apartment so I'm more interested in it as a always on Siri uh listening device um for homekit controls and such um and then AirPlay 2 integration which I'm hoping that the airport expresses get updated to so I don't have to go out and buy new stuff to do uh airpl 2 with my existing speakers yeah I'm hopeful for that also um and that would be an update that we had you know one one of the first updates in a long while to the airport expresses yeah I mean they've had some um you know firmware updates that just like patch stuff or whatever but presumably they'd be able to do this through software um Apple has said that it will be up to developers but obviously when it comes to the airport express that's going to be up to Apple itself but yeah I I'm I'm excited for Siri controls two speakers and integrating AirPlay 2 as part of homekit um and so I think that it's more I'm I'm excited about the homepod but I'm more excited about all the ecosystem changes coming with it in iOS 11 yes you know I've been experimenting recently they updated um Amazon Alexa to allow you to use an Alexa speaker to control media right they've always had the voice remote on the second generation Fire TV stick and the the all the fire TVs which is similar in some ways to the voice button on um on the Apple TV remote and that you can you can call up programs you can call up series and you can tell it to start playing you can do things like uh say Siri I didn't catch that and it will rewind 10 seconds and turn on the subtitles that that's what Apple TV does uh Fire TV lacks some of that the Google home speaker has always been able to control chomecast devices to kick off programs Alexa now is able to start media and control the the TV in a rudimentary way and for TVs that have Alexa built into to it that are you know basically TVs with with Fire TV built into it you'll be able to control those vi of your voice speaker as well and that works with third party speakers I proved that this week where I took a uh a jam voice speaker which is you know home tics or hmdx product that works with Alexa and I was able to control the TV which was nice I'm hopeful that sir on the homepod will make that kind of thing even easier you know you're talking about controlling in the house and currently I bet if I remember right you've got a Logitech Harmony home hub um combined with home Bridge running on a Raspberry Pi to be able to control your media center and I I want that alwayson experience of just being able to say you know uh Hey Siri kickoff stranger things on Netflix and have it start yeah I think that um it's not going to be there when it launches but if you look at the capabilities the homepod um through some digging of the firmware that was released um developers found that it's going to have a g a full gigabyte of ram so you don't give it a full gigabyte of RAM for a speaker with a tiny display uh without the intention of opening it up to third parties and uh potentially a homepod app store or something so uh I would imagine that that's going to be a 2018 thing um but again a lot of horsepower in there um and that will not only allow Apple to keep the product on the market without any updates for a few years but also expandability well similar to The Watch right when you bought an Apple Watch you didn't want it to be obsolete the first year out and by buying you know the same thing is true of the Apple TV we bought these Apple TV 4thg and we don't want to be obsolete the first year maybe second year is possible right and then the same is true of a homep pod if you're spending $349 on the speaker you don't want to have to replace and I think that the the Apple watch was a different situation too because of the size of it and the fact that it's relying on battery power and whatever uh they had to cut some Corners they certainly could have put in more more processing power but uh needed to be concerned about battery life with the homepod they don't have those same concerns it's going to be plugged into the wall it's got plenty of space to work with they don't have to wor about cooling it or battery life or anything like that so they might as well put in something that goes above and beyond uh what it needs to do and and even if it starts which I think it will uh running third party apps integrate with Syria at some point um it's still going to have plenty of overhead to handle that kind of stuff first first of all the developer in question that we learned all the stuff from is Steven trouton Smith yes and uh Steph's been poking at this stuff off and on for years and uh he he does have some apps that are on the App Store that are not related to poking into these things right he had lights off which was a game um he's the person behind one of the two people behind the grace app and Grace is a uh an assistive device for people who are non-verbal to be able to speak by arranging icons and sentences um using something called PEX Picture Exchange so you can uh you can arrange pictures into sentences to communicate kind of thing of course he's always interested in doing this stuff as a sort of side habit side gig he discovered a bunch of stuff about the rumored iPhone 8 you know there's a uh the idea of being tapped to wake um we've talked before about how there's going to be sensors in the middle of the top of the screen as opposed to this this completely bezeless device and so the status bar is split on either side of them and he found some confirmation of the bezeless design of the iPhone facial recognition he even found the resolution of the display and icons for the forthcoming device for those keeping score at home it's going to be a 2,436 X 1125 display it's going to be higher resolution and smaller than the 5.5 in iPhone 7 plus which means higher pixel density which potentially means better use for uh virtual reality applications as well it's it's really going to be interesting um it's going to have a what a 5.15 in display so yeah this is where it gets a little confusing because the display is supposed to be 5.15 in but the total display area is suppos to be Clos to 5.8 in and where you're getting that extra 6 in or so uh is supposed to be a um for lack of a better term touch bar area uh basically the lower tenth of the screen uh will be where the home button used to reside and that will have some sort of a virtual home button um and potentially maybe menu options to the left or right of the home button or something like that um but the belief is that the bottom portion of the screen uh will not not necessarily be available to developers to fill up or not necessarily encouraged to um which will then allow that to serve as some sort of a system function area for uh one of the concepts is being put out there is instead of having the back button in the top left corner when using apps or uh the the the system wide back button uh where the carrier name goes uh putting in the lower left corner so you don't have to stretch your thumb up there to get it anymore uh because it'll take up this lower part of the screen which will be reserved for menu type stuff um what will be interesting to me to see is how these two supposedly separate displays on there are blurred like for example um if I'm watching a video is it going to be relegated to the 5.15 in area or is it can be able to bleed over and take up the entire screen I would think that given that Apple gives developers the ability to get rid of the uh the menu SL whatever bar at the top whatever it's called um on the iPhone um I would imagine that certain apps and status bar thank status bar um I would imagine that certain apps and certain situations would be given the right to take up the entire screen so if you're watching a video you get that much more uh space out of it but we don't really know that yet we we do know that the screen size that was uh discovered in the firmware by uh Steven uh matches exactly with what everybody's favorite analyst Ming quo said earlier this year uh the numbers are identical and he was the one that said that there was going to be the additional area of the uh the function row slouch bar whatever you want to call it so um I I think that everything that we saw in that respect from the supply chain back in February is going to prove accurate as has been seen through these leaks uh the design has proven accurate um there's a icon uh giving a kind of overview of what the iPhone 8 displays still look like that was found in the hod firmware and as expected it's going to have a little uh indentation chin whatever you want to call it forehead um uh up at the top of the screen that will um cut in and allow the earpiece and forward- facing cameras an infrared sensor that sort of stuff to be there and then the the brow and uh then to the left and right of it um it will uh extend up slightly and then that will have enough depth for the uh what did you call it the the what bar the status bar uh so imagine with an OLED screen um you still have your carrier uh to the left of the status bar and Wi-Fi and all that um and then on the right side you have Bluetooth and what have you um and then in the center of it would be the earpiece and and camera and all that but you wouldn't be able to tell which part was screen and which part was just the the surface of the phone because not only is the olded display it fused to the glass so it looks like it's right on the surface but it's also because it's led the blacks are true blacks so they'll match the perimeter of the phone so we talked about this a few weeks ago where we were asking you know if they made a white iPhone 8 would they have a white or any other color for for that matter would they have a white front to the screen like they've had on phones to date and this is why I don't think that they'll do it because it'll actually blend in with the UI right because you'll have these black borders and perimeters there that are not meant to look like they're part of the screen they're just meant to be uh part of the phone essentially and they're kind of blurring the lines now now first of all hold on first of all Apple allows developers to change the background of the status bar and invert the colors right you you can have when on a white screen application you can have a status bar that has a white background and black uh black writing black text black indicators on the um whereas on a normal screen or black screen you you get white indicators or a colored background so it's possible that they could e either either remove that functionality and just have that portion of the status bar always be black with white text white white uh indication or they could have the firmware recognize the device that it's installed on and always have the appropriate colored background for the status bar to match the colored brow where the sensors are yeah it'll be interesting to see what Birch they take and they already do this to some extent right if you when you turn on a white faed iPhone you get a white screen with a black Apple symbol and if you turn on a black faced iPhone you get a black screen with a a white Apple logo so they already recognize the different hardware and are able to do that to match the screen right so you know I I think that um it does make some sense there but um given and and maybe that would work maybe the white background maybe you're right maybe white background up there would work I think that the reason that I'm thinking of it is is just because um the uh the dark the blacks on OLED are true blacks so it would it would blend in with the edges of this display so it seems to make the most sense to me but the question is how badly do they want to hide those borders yeah and it jibes with the rumor about less color yeah that and that would make sense you know the need to figure out how they want to do it is it going to look weird to have a black front glass display with a gold uh glass back uh it may not it may not work um and and there may be some changes to the user interface in how it works you know um having the the top bar turn blue when location is being used um or when uh you're tethering and something like that uh maybe those right the red for recording maybe those functions are going to change in some way uh because of the design of the phone uh something specific to that model we still don't know what's going to become of touch ID we don't we don't even know what's going to become of the the time being displayed at the uh at the top of the screen developer Gom Rambo found strings related to the detection of facial expression so features like Smiles frowns uh puckers and dimples are there um well I think this was interesting a lot of people miss the point kind of on that um the smart cam feature yeah um and they just read it oh you know this is like HDR and knows to turn on and off based on the lighting or something like that if you look at what Apple's already done with machine learning in in iOS for years now and we've talked about this and and we've written articles about it this is one of the Lesser known features of the photos app in iOS that you can search for virtually anything you can search for dogs you can search for chairs you can search for beaches mountains um you can search for snow um whatever the ocean um and it will find it you can search for cucumber or uh avocados stuff like that um and because of Apple's machine learning algorithms and and object detection and that sort of stuff it finds this stuff like instantly in your phone it's pretty crazy and so it seems like what they're going to be doing here is taking that knowledge that they have with object recognition and applying it in real time to when you're shooting a photo on the camera itself and so imagine that um you know it knows that you're taking a up close photo of a person so it automatically go goes into portrait mode for example and gets you that shot or um it knows that it's a shot of uh you know a concert and so it's going to up the brightness greatly because it's dark in there or lower shutter speed or whatever there're all kinds of things that it could do on the Fly because it knows where you are and what you're doing all right uh let's let's for our listeners because some of our readers had questions about this um we need to explain why a homepod firmware has details about iOS devices that are not released yet so we need to explain for our listeners how a unreleased firmware for a device that's going to be released about the same time as we expect the phone to be released has details about this unreleased phone product well the underlying code is the same and so um iOS when it first came out it was the iPhone operating system Apple boasted that it was based on the same underlying code as as uh Mac OS at the time OS 10 um and as iOS has grown over the years it's kind of become its own thing uh it has the same basic underlying code base but it's really its own thing and so now as Apple builds new platforms it's building them off iOS so TV OS is based on it watch OS is based on it and now whatever they want to call the homepod OS is based on it um and because it's running an A8 chip um it shares a lot of code with iOS and so this is the same reason you know you'll see different firmwares if you were to download the ipsw files for a iPhone or an iPad or whatever they have different tweaks for the different Hardware different capabilities and whatever but there's always been evidence of features for other devices or even other Platforms in iOS because the same basic code base which is why um in years past we found evidence of new features in forthcoming iPhones in firmer releases for current iPhones so like before 3D touch came to the iPhone we saw references to it in iOS releases for devices that were not capable of 3D touch and so you're seeing the same thing this year but um I guess they just didn't carefully enough remove the things that need to be removed from the homepod firmware and so there's a ton of evidence in there regarding what's going to be in this Fall's iPhone 8 um references to things like the cameras facial recognition uh the interface charging you name it yeah and the other question is where did this firmware come from where where is this homepod firmware that was um you know it it seems to me that it escaped out of coperino how did it get somehow ended up on their server where they host firmware files for developers and someone found it hanging around on the server and it was there for like a whole week and anybody could download it and take a look and so these developers downloaded it and just started poking through there and just started finding these things and presumably it was mistakenly uploaded because the first of all you can't get your hands on a homod so I don't know why they need to get the the the software out there for it anyhow for developers but also these same things are not included in the iPhone or iPad iOS 11 firmware that's out there um those software updates just don't don't have this information so they're more more carefully cleaned uh before they before they're shared or that the uh the iOS 11 build that will come around the time of that phone will be a point release update for all that's what it supposedly is yeah it's like an 11.0.2 or something there's there's a lot of information here uh what else did we discover discover from this thing well um we talked about the smart camera that's one that I'm pretty excited about um some of the other ones here were let me look through the facial recognition um to unlock the phone um is also going to be used for Apple pay um lending Credence to the suggestion that perhaps the there will not be Touch ID on this phone um either on the back or embedded in the display um so you'll need to look at your phone to unlock it and and as we've talked about before that raises a lot of questions about user interface and how well it will work and how secure it is some of the rumors out there are that it might be more secure than Touch ID because it'll use more points of recognition than you would have on a fingerprint um and also more convenient because you would not have to press a certain place on the phone you could just look at the phone Etc um as I've said before I also see that creating some usage problems in terms of uh Apple pay and your phone not being within range of the camera um and also potential security issues where somebody could just physically pick up your phone and hold it up to your face and then unlock it whereas uh you know otherwise it might be a little more difficult for them to get your fingerprint on there um but I don't know how those issues will be addressed and I can't really dismiss or uh complain about them until the device is announced they're just you have to think of them as interesting questions that I have as we await the iPhone 8 announcement yeah so I want to take a step back and talk about the iPhone 7 plus you you've talked before about Vic kotra and when you were talking about him last you were talking about him in reference to an Apple watch band that he was working on and in a Facebook post on Sunday uh Vic talked about photos that he'd taken and people commented on the fact that he was using an iPhone and he responded and I'm just going to read his response he said here's the problem it's Android Android is an open- Source mostly operating system that has to be neutral to all parties and this sounds really good until you get into the details ever wonder why a Samsung phone has a confused and bewildering array of photo options should I use the Samsung camera or the Android camera Samsung gallery or Google photos it's because when Samsung innovates with the underlying Hardware like putting in a better camera they have to convince Google to allow that Innovation to be serviced to other applications via the appropriate API that can take Years also the greatest Innovation isn't happening at the hardware level it's happening at the computational photography level Google was crushing this 5 years a ago they had auto awesome that used AI techniques to automatically remove wrinkles whitened teeth Advent yeting but recently Google has fallen back Apple doesn't have those constraints they innovate in the underlying hardware and just simply update the software through the latest Innovations like portrait mode and ship it bottom line if you truly care about great photography you own an iPhone if you don't mind being a few years behind buy an Android a lot of people responded negatively to Vic because they they held up how great the pixel camera is they held up the dxo mark ratings of Android phones but the point is that viondra is talking about the entire experience from Hardware lenses all the way to the software not not just the quality of the camera or the quality of the photo in daylight or whatever you know whichever the things that dxomark is scoring on and dxomark when they score they have a range of different things and then they come together to average to get to a point score so it could be that the iPhone excels at many of the things but the pixel gets just a few right and they waited for those few for the Android phones to uh to succeed at the dxo marks to to out paste the iPhone of dxo Mark gandotra before he was doing his own product his own company he was the senior vice president of social networking services at Google that is basically behind go+ and Google+ photos did things like understand what was going on in your calendar and things You' invited other people to so that you could have photo albums created automatically for you out of social events right they understood that you had a birthday party on your calendar that it was taking place at a location and when everyone else that had been invited to the event showed up at the location and was taking pictures all of those photos would work together and then Google would be able to create the kinds of uhu group albums that said remember what was going on a year ago here's the party with all the photos from everyone else which still hasn't been replicated anywhere else mhm to my knowledge but that was something that was easily 5 years ago and it's hard to think about what Google has done since other than try and put stabilization into the pixel which is computational photography but what else are they doing you know I I know people that argue for taking Android completely private source to to make it not open source and I think those people miss the the point that it's never going to quite happen the other thing that people talk about is Google's work on a replacement operating system called fuchsia and that's something that we we've slowly seen develop uh one of these things is going to happen Google's either going to replace Android with fuchsia or Android is going to have to change in order from the there're always going to be especially when you're dealing with Android or or even Windows there are always going to be devices out there that do certain things better um it's it's hard to find a device that does everything better it you know you may have a higher quality camera a higher quality lens or or what have you um you may be able to download better apps to control your camera even on the iPhone uh you know people have the you know people like to use camera plus and some of the other options out there but really when you get down to it when you just set up a phone and start using the camera app you're going to be hard pressed to find a better experience than on the iPhone and that's what Gonda was talking about especially now with portrait mode which he was especially in Praise of just how easy it was for him to get these DSLR mimicking shots of his family in a very high quality cinematic look um and it was just so easy for him that he just doesn't want to mess around with any Android phones and and I understand that I feel the same way those are the stories we have this week there anything else you wish we' covered and listener if there's anything you wish we'd covered that we didn't mention please go ahead and reach out and contact us we'll spend some time on it I I guess for the third week in a row I have to mention that I wish we' talked a little bit about a carplay but I'm going to put that off one more time and and not because I I want to keep teasing it out like that but because I'm getting ready to install a wireless carplay head unit into my car and we're going to have a full review of it and we'll be able to talk knowledgeably about what we're doing with wireless carplay and how that fits into changing the automotive landscape we'll hear all about that and more next time on the Apple Insider podcast we will see you all next week thank you so much for joiningyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to this the 132nd episode of Apple insiders podcast I'm your host Victor marks and joining me is Neil Hughes Victor how are you I'm brilliant Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft that company of companies that that leader among leaders has an accessory for the Apple iPad did you want to start off with this story I mean we have a lot of other stuff to cover well this is Microsoft Insider yeah right let's just lead with this one quickly okay go ahead we're always interested in things that stem from leaked information or otherwise surprising and Microsoft making an accessory for an Apple product is particularly surprising because it wasn't so many years ago that you would be shunned for carrying an Apple device on the Microsoft campus now those days have have changed those days are gone especially with the uh what what happened to Microsoft zoom and when what happened to the Windows Phone products for example but it's still a little surprising that the Microsoft website shows a touch cover keyboard suitable for Apple's iPad now the touch cover is is an accessory that's commonly been sold with the Microsoft Surface ever since the surface began even with the Surface RT it's it's hard to know if this is something that's forthcoming or if it was a scrapped project um but it's mentioned on a page listing products that have integrated lithium batteries included the inclusion of the battery inside a Microsoft touch cover for iPad would suggest that the keyboard accessory is Bluetooth and is of course battery powered because it doesn't sync over the SMART connector Port you know the the touch cover is is sort of a 3mm thick keyboard usually uh and it it frequently is either a keyboard or a keyboard with a mouse and I think the only time I've seen it is the touch cover has a mouse integrated and a trackpad integrated to it right so that's also interesting because there is no trackpad for an iPad right kind of a weird thing so this is interesting I I like it I I don't know that this will ever see the light of day you got to understand that the way Microsoft develops products is very different from Apple uh Microsoft is a huge corporation that uh operates kind of in these uh weird silos and things will get very close to coming to Market and then get scrapped at the last minute um as evidenced a couple years ago when uh there was leaked information about the Surface Mini and like even like a manual for the product was was made and everything and I guess it was like ready to go and Microsoft said no we're not going to make that and they ended up scrapping it so it's very possible that they dabbled with this idea of a touch cover and got through the entire process of getting it certified and all that kind of stuff and then just decided not to do it and some remnant of it lingers on Microsoft's website but it was discovered this week um that uh it was on a page listing products with integrated lithium batteries on Microsoft site just like uh uh the necessary stuff that you have to list legally for those types of products it was mentioned on there that's compliance kind of thing compliance yeah for a touch cover design for the iPad so interesting it's an interesting future I mean we've had we've seen for years that Apple's had collaborations and strong relationships with Microsoft whether it was the influx of cash that Bill Gates was a part of announcing at Boston maor years ago right 1997 1998 time frame uh or the browser for Mac OS 10 initially was Internet Explorer for Mac right carried over as a carbon Port from OS 9 from system 9 UM whether it was it was the continued support of Office Mac right MH and the apps on iOS that that Microsoft and Apple have this sort of pushpull relationship yeah I mean uh you think about uh when office came to the iPad um and you know now you can get it on your iPhone too uh that was a big change for Microsoft and a lot of the features and and and capabilities came to uh came to iPad before it came to surface so um it's interesting that you know Microsoft's strategy on these things can can be very different depending on the product in some ways they integrate very well with Apple products and in some ways they don't so it wouldn't be a shock to see them release this keyboard for the iPad um I think it would be interesting I would rather it be a SMART connector keyboard um just because yes but that's because you'd rather everything be using the spark connector I want to keep my iPad as thin as possible so having an extra bulk of a battery seems unnecessary to me a better question is why has no one taken advantage of the SMART connector in in force why why are there so few things out there that work with it that's a good question the only company that is compatible at the moment is uh uh Logitech outside of apple and we don't really know why uh we don't know if it's licensing or if Apple just doesn't even allow companies to license it I I wonder if it's also because that connector is available on three skes right it could be a limited market hard to say that were the connector that were available on every iPhone for example be a different story yes there'd be a lot more uptake for it wouldn't you say absolutely yeah we we talk about anecdotally Apple being a very big company and being a very profitable company and having a large amount of cash on hand um we talked about this the other week when we were talking about where it fell on fortuns profitability and revenue listings right mhm we we have the third quarter sales call report mhm Apple declared that they sold 4.29 million macintoshes M and that's up from last year yeah it's not up a lot but it's up right and I want to put this in a context right the the computer sales and you know unit sales I think are also down everyone else that's in the business of selling personal computers has been making less money for them and selling fewer units would you agree correct and so for Apple to hold even or increase is is important to note because it's in context of everyone else falling away and they're retaining that share yeah apple has outpaced the market even in even in quarters where they've uh seen a year-over-year decline their year-over-year decline was less than the large Market I think in every quarter except for one within like the last decade it's been going on for a long time um so you know this trend continues um apple has a segment of the market that it continues to grow um whereas the rest of the market uh on the low end is being besieged by phones and cheap tablets and Apple's iPad yeah and historically the third quarter is kind of a Down quarter anyway the fourth quarter is the quarter that a lot of sales happen yes yeah this quarter was a little different this year because we saw um some new products come in June at WWDC um and then we also had the low-end iPad refresh in March so this was the first full quarter of sales of that so if there was any big surprise this quarter it was the iPad um sales were 11.4 million in the quarter uh and this is the first time in four years that iPad sales grew year-over-year um after getting off to a really hot start uh back in 2010 and and growing for three years they've been on the decline a slow decline ever since and general the consensus on that is that uh people just they like their iPads they just use them for a long time and so a lot of people that own an iPad 2 or an iPad Air1 didn't feel really compelled to upgrade to some of the ones that have come out in recent years um and it's believed that the uh low-end $330 iPad uh is really what May the unit sales go up this time but interestingly the average selling price is about the same so that means that the high-end iPad Pros are also selling okay I I I agree with this narrative I think that this is the first time that we've had a compelling iPad the that is at a lower price than they traditionally have been right much lower right for the for the entry model at any rate and and also for the more expensive storage models so you have something that's much more affordable and is a very capable iPad very so between that and your choices are very simply would you like the iPad or would you like the iPad Pro and the price difference between them is huge so it's not and the price difference is huge so it's an easy choice to make yeah if you go to the store and you see your options you know you're not going to be Heming and Hauling about which one should I get I think that you either know whether you want the pro or not and I think for the vast majority of people the entry level one is more than enough and if you really wanted a keyboard you could get a Bluetooth one yeah if you want the pro you want the Pro because you want the pencil right that's that's why you're buying the pr because you want to use the pencil I mean there are other reasons to buy the pro but for the most part yeah I agree that that's one of the things that helps you differentiate them correct and larger screens and larger screens but you know you look at that and it's the same thing that Apple's been doing other product lineups as well uh the iPhone has the SE and the 7 and the 7 plus um and then we're going to get even more layers uh this fall uh the iPad it's very clearly you know lined up between the entry level model and and the pro model and the entry level model we talked about this a few times in the past few months apple is getting more affordable than ever while they're also getting more expensive than ever and it's a good thing because they're addressing two very different segments of the market if you want an iPad it's cheaper than ever to get one right now it's affordable you can get one and it's a great product and if you want a really capable iPad you can get one but it's more expensive than it's ever been um so I I think that that's good for everybody honestly I think that the iPhone SE um and the iPhone 7 plus uh playing to different two different ends of the market are absolutely fantastic ideas and I think that it ensures that anybody that wants to get in uh can do so and it gives Apple the ability to kind of trickle down technology with newer devices and then eventually it'll make its way elsewhere as they've done for years across product platforms I keep going back to the product Matrix you remember way back at the dawn of time there was a simple for Quadrant repetitive uh Matrix right and it consisted of a power book a power Mac an iBook and an iMac right right and within those you had different levels different equipment right you could buy the iMac or the iMac DV for example or you could get the uh two different variations of the iBook one had a fire wire Port right right or you could get uh a couple different flavors of powermac within each one of those so so you had the four main product segments and then within those you or categories within those you had three more options right and since that time to now the past let's say 17 years we've seen the product and Matrix the the offering uh of these different categories explode with different types of machines and then with additional options among those machines right right to the point where people say it's no longer simple it's overly complex to try and choose among them and I think that's partly what happened with with iPad sales is that not only were there a bunch of devices that were perfectly suitable for the for a 3year period right but that there was also you were spoiled for choice you had had way too much to choose from and when you have too many options you get paralyzed I think that's a bad thing that came out of the iPod era for Apple uh you know the iPad was obviously a runaway success and they made multiple versions of it and continued to sell them for years and and they all served very different purposes and yet uh sometimes stepped on each other's toes as well you know the iPod Classic stayed around for a while but as the iPod Touch went up in capacity it became less and less relevant uh the clip on iPod Nano uh competed directly with the iPod Shuffle um you know I I think that um maybe I think you're right but Apple's made a concerted effort in the last few years to really simplify the product lineups and I think that the iPhone and iPad are great examples of that and the newer products too like the Apple watch um are pretty good examples of that um especially with the series 2 Apple watch you know you can get the S1 uh that doesn't have GPS and doesn't have the true waterproof you can get the S2 that has it or you can get a stainless steel or you can get the the ceramic and it's pretty clear you know the prices are are very different the features are clearly laid out um you know aside from choosing between a S1 and an S2 uh on the Apple watch I think that you know it's pretty clear what what model that you're going to be able to afford or what you're going to want to get um and I think that that is maybe maybe the launch of the Apple watch helped encourage Apple to to simplify its product lineups as you've seen um the MacBook still needs some work just because the Legacy um 13-inch MacBook Pro remains part of the lineup but uh you've seen that effort on the iPad and and the iPhone and I think that they've done a pretty good job yeah the the 13-inch and the MacBook Air as well both exist for a price point basically basically the the MacBook Air is so they can hit that under $1,000 Mark um and the 12-in MacBook just isn't there yet um and then MacBook Pro is even more confusing because you can get the 13-in Legacy um you can get the 13 in with USBC without touch bar or you can get it with touch bar and then you go to the 15inch blah blah blah uh the Mac lineup is going to take some time just because new technology was introduced and apple can't get the price Downs price points down uh while maintaining their margins um but you're seeing especially inspired by what they did in the iPhone for years in just keeping Legacy models around um and just dropping the price on them uh that makes it a very easy way of just kind of keeping the routine you know pushing it down the lineup I still think that the iPhone could use some work just because the iPhone 6s is the mid-tier phone and it has the same processor as the iPhone SE um and then it was even worse a year ago when the iPhone 6 was the mid-tier phone and it had a slower processor than the iPhone SE um but you know hopefully we'll see what the what the picture is going to be this fall and into next year assuming they update the iPhone SE what they're going to do there but I think I think that the lineup right now with the iPad is very clearly laid out you have an entry level model um with a fast processor but if you want more horsepower pencil and keyboard capabilities you got to go with the pro and by making the 10.5 in model uh slightly larger than the 9.7 in uh they add more value to it and just make it even clearer in the in the differentiation and I think that you saw the market respond to it in a number of ways I think that not only the entry level model and the price point helping to drive sales but uh the pro being second second generation now um and people gravitating toward that because a lot of the story has been around that entry level model and rightfully so but when the average selling price of the iPad didn't budge um that says that a lot of people are buying Pros too definitely you know it's it's one of these things that are going to have to clean up with the lineup eventually because it's just paralyzing to to be able to try and buy what what are you going to buy for your kid for school right you know are you going to buy your kid an iPad or an iPad Pro or are you going to buy your kid a 12-in Mac or a 13in and which 13-in there's just a lot of choices there that make it very difficult to choose and and apple hasn't been content to just let the low-end models languish either the iPhone SE early this year had it storage doubled uh last year when the Apple Watch series 2 launched the um the series 1 uh uh model was given a faster proster because the first gy was just too slow at that point even though it came with a lower price so um they're not afraid to to add more value as they lower the prices as well I think that it's just a little bit more comp complex with the MacBook and it's going to take a few years I mean your logical progression there is to get rid of the MacBook Air and replace it with a 12-in Macbook but they need to be able to get that down to an under $11,000 price point and at that price then they won't have the touch touch bar are they going to bring the touch bar to the 12-in MacBook you know do they eventually phase out the non-touch bar MacBook Pro uh you know there's a lot of tough decisions for them to make there and it'll be interesting to see how they do that in the next few years 1.2 billion cumulative iPhones sold there were 40 .8 million sold um oh I'm sorry it was uh no last quarter was 41 million iPhones sold in the quarter um which was ahead of Market expectations um and the iPhone continues to perform very well I think that there were Lowered Expectations because the hype for the iPhone 8 is so great and Tim Cook even said in the last earnings call uh for the March quarter that they were seeing uh sales being suppressed a little more that this go around just because of so much hype for the iPhone 8 but uh clearly the iPhone uh 7 and and uh 7 plus are still performing well um and apple is still selling a boatload of iPhones the average selling price is up year on year mhm because the 7 plus is selling yep the 7 plus has a $20 premium over previous plus phones because of the dual camera and that also serves as an upsell which again goes back to us talking about Apple more clearly defining the different devices in their price point um the 7 plus has more of a reason to exist other than a larger screen and that is driving more people to buy the more expensive model so is there anything to be disappointed in here at all not really um I mean I think all around really good quarter and you're seeing Apple's stock respond accordingly uh you know the the the Mac sales um were were strong uh it will be interesting to see what they do going into back to school and uh and all that but you got to remember that the iMac the MacBook Pro the MacBook Air and the 12-in MacBook were all updated at WWDC so you know that's one of those things where perhaps it could have performed a little better than it did but it's still not a disappointing uh number I mean Mac sales were up over year over year they were up SE sequentially um I think that you know apple is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to Intel chips obviously there's a lot of people that think they should have a 32 gig ram option for the 15-inch MacBook Pro um there are you know rumors about some big changes coming to the MacBook Pro maybe next year um I think the more interesting thing there now is to see whether or not they can squeeze in another MacBook or any sort of Mac update this fall or whether the Mac lineup is going to stay the way it is until 2018 but all around a very strong quarter iPhone outperformed iPad way outperformed expectations the mac's doing well uh the Apple watch uh they said sales were up 50% last quarter year-over-year um so they still haven't given exact numbers of course on the Apple watch but it would seem that the watch is doing pretty well and I continue to see and do toally a lot of watches out in the wild so I think that the Apple watch is starting to catch on in a pretty meaningful way there have been some Market estimates that are putting it like you know sales at like two two two and a half to three million sales a quarter um the latest estimate that we had this week uh put it at 2.8 million watch units last quarter um I think that's pretty good um considering it's a iPhone only accessory uh I I think that I think that that is something to be pleased with overall the financials are very good and and the market responded accordingly but one of the things that it's important to point out is that um the the guidance for the next quarter the September quarter was also very strong um and that is another reason why investors are buying in big for Apple right now um after the earnings because uh the expectation has been that the iPhone might be delayed iPhone 8 specifically um and by delayed I mean later than usual you can't de delay a product that's never been announced with with a date and we're not talking about a significant we're talking about you know some Bank of America was saying September or was that JP Morgan Chase well September some other people have been saying November or October right right November or October is not a huge delay is it it's not but uh people are impatient and and customers are impatient and investors are impatient as well so there's a few things to to consider here first of all Apple usually launches its iPhones toward the end of the September quarter so they get a weekend of new iPhone sales in which are somewhere around 12 million to start for the launch weekend is where we're at now uh if they didn't hit it in the September quarter then analysts have to adjust accordingly and push those units back to the December quarter then there's a fear that maybe they can't produce enough in time because of a shortened window before Christmas so the sales might be hurt uh these are the concerns that analysts have I'm not saying that they're founded uh a lot of the analyst reaction has been that they're going to sell the iPhones whether they sell them this year or next year people are going to want them and I tend to agree with that but um the way that the guidance came out for Apple for next quarter gross margins down slightly uh Revenue coming in higher than people expected um the expectation is that they're going to be able to launch the iPhone 7S uh at the very least at the end of next quarter and potentially some limited iPhone 8 sales or maybe early October but the way that um the market is reading into the numbers that Apple put out uh it's looked like they're it looks like they are the very least going to start ramping up production for the iPhone 8 in the next quarter in September uh which would indicate that we probably don't have to wait until November for the phone I would say maybe a limited late September or early October launch um and then the question becomes how many can they manufacture with the expectation that the iPhone 8 might be a premium pro model with a high price um and keeping uh you know limited inventory because they can't produce enough because of new technology in it uh that's where it's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out out because it this is let's let's not mistake it let's not mince words here this is a gamble for Apple if this is what they're actually going to do because you run the risk of people looking at the iPhone 7S and saying that phone isn't that exciting I want that iPhone Pro that costs $1,200 and some of them might even say I I'm willing to pay the $1,200 for the iPhone Pro however there are none in the store so I'm going to wait and if this ends up being an airpods type of situation where here we are 10 months later and you still can't get them in the store what does that do for Apple's bottom line absolutely you you lost your airpods didn't you I didn't lose mine um I well I'll I'll put this out there as a PSA for people um the find my airpods feature that's built into find my iPhone it's pretty worthless um it's a nice gimmick um I think it was something done by Apple to address concerns of people that said what if I lose one of my airpods uh how will I find it um having said that uh don't depend on it to actually find anything uh my wife doesn't know where she lost her airpods um she was taking a train and then took a lift and she has contacted everybody uh to see if they fell out of her bag in the assorted vehicles that she took and it has not shown up we attempted to locate the last known location with find my airpods but uh it was actually showing um a couple days before was the last time it was connected even though that wasn't true because she knew that she had used it that day so the way that it works because obviously the airpods don't have built-in GPS or data so it's not like you could find or Wi-Fi for that matter or or Wi-Fi basically what will happen is when they're connected to your phone it will occasionally ping with the location of your phone to let you know the last place that it was connected to help you find them um and this is not something that I can ding Apple for because I don't know what else they could really do it's a nice feature to have and I'm glad that it's there but uh in the case of they update it more aggressively that's what they could do they could yeah I I mean I guess I I don't know I I think that um it's it's not particularly helpful um through my own stupidity I lost my Power Beats three uh I don't even know how he did that I think I think I may have uh uh left them in the in my pocket for the laundry or something and I have no idea where they are I been and find them so it's been a costly uh week for for me with lost headphones I'm like o but yeah so ps8 everybody if you don't rely too much on the my airpods like they have a feature that's nice that's um uh it'll play a noise through the earpiece to help you find them like a like a high-pitch noise but the problem is if your airpods are in the case that they come in then that covers up the sound so you can barely hear them it's muffled now if you just lose a straggle one like in the seat cushion or something or in your couch or whatever uh then that might help there but uh it it's a nice feature to have and I'm glad that they offer it but don't expect it to see save your bacon it is a problem keeping up with these things I I think technically they could update find my iPhone in and the uh you know Apple services and Cloud every time that you connect them to a phone or a device mhm but that doesn't help you if you connected them at your office and then they were lost in the cab on the way home yeah they weren't connected then yeah so there's I don't know what the good solution would be there um you know maybe a future air pods update could include a tiny embedded speaker in the in the charging case so that that could broadcast noise if you're missing it or something but other than that it's it's just one of those things where be more careful with your stuff at the end of the day there's no one to blame but us for lost having lost the headphones so everything needs to have a virtual Sim in it right and can then go ahead and use LTE or or you know internet of lost things yeah pretty much that's that's where we're heading but talking about data and connectivity you know in in weeks past we've reviewed a bunch of different Wi-Fi systems right you know we reviewed the uh the Euro Wi-Fi we had the Google Wi-Fi in for review we've had the ubic amplify system in for review and uh we just took receipt of the new ero version two right and you know they're all trying to solve this interesting problem um euro is is a single router Wi-Fi buy model you no that's that's not great let's stretch to the r euro is a distributed system right instead of buying single routers that are just one router you put in your home if you've got places that are bad coverage in your house buying a distributed system can help you overcome that so ero has the power to seamlessly blanket your home and fast reliable Wi-Fi and you can use ethernet Wireless or any combination um you set the the main unit on a flat surface you plug it into a wall outlet and it expands coverage in any room and they've got triband so trib band is in in the past we've had 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios in Wi-Fi systems right triband is the addition of a third 5 GHz radio what this does is that it increases the reliability in coverage that that you can say you've got 5 GHz for your gaming systems and your media players 5 GHz for your client computers and then 2.4 for legacy devices um it pretty much the the second generation ero is triband and twice as fast as its predecessor so you can do more in in every room in the house what's really interesting for me here is that the second generation ero added a thread radio you remember a year ago we were talking about Google thread yep so there's Google thread which is sort of it's It's a new protocol that Google came up with that they want to use to replace zigg and zwave particularly zigg and so Euro can connect to low power devices like locks doorbells and sensors and participate in a in a sort of home network based around Google thread that you know fits in with your light bulbs fits in with your your uh thermostat smoke alarms the whole thing and so your Wi-Fi can be a part of that it's it's an interesting concept and this is one of the first thread devices that I've seen that's going to get out there in widespread way that isn't one of those door lock kind of things mhm whichever model you choose eo's incredible customer support means you can get on a call and you can get a hold of a Wi-Fi expert within about 30 seconds the ero Beacon which is so it used to be that oo's devices were all the same You' open the box and youd see three units that looked the same and you just pick one and say that's the master unit right now they have one unit that looks identical to the first version outwardly but the two beacons the the accessory units are much smaller they're half the size but they're way more powerful than the original units and I've been doing some experimentation here and they they increase coverage and the app is incredibly simple to set up and it's it's not hard to customize either which is one of these things because there's always this challenge especially within networking of being able to customize and keeping it easy and ero really have have done the best balance of that that I've seen so far um it it really is good so for free overnight shipping you can visit ero.com and select overnight shipping as the option and enter crunchy at checkout that's e.com with offer code crunchy at the checkout Neil I'm excited about the homepod speaker are you I am you sound you're not you sound like you're not so excited I'm excited about it I I kind of want one yeah I want one I I I'm I already have AirPlay all over my apartment so I'm more interested in it as a always on Siri uh listening device um for homekit controls and such um and then AirPlay 2 integration which I'm hoping that the airport expresses get updated to so I don't have to go out and buy new stuff to do uh airpl 2 with my existing speakers yeah I'm hopeful for that also um and that would be an update that we had you know one one of the first updates in a long while to the airport expresses yeah I mean they've had some um you know firmware updates that just like patch stuff or whatever but presumably they'd be able to do this through software um Apple has said that it will be up to developers but obviously when it comes to the airport express that's going to be up to Apple itself but yeah I I'm I'm excited for Siri controls two speakers and integrating AirPlay 2 as part of homekit um and so I think that it's more I'm I'm excited about the homepod but I'm more excited about all the ecosystem changes coming with it in iOS 11 yes you know I've been experimenting recently they updated um Amazon Alexa to allow you to use an Alexa speaker to control media right they've always had the voice remote on the second generation Fire TV stick and the the all the fire TVs which is similar in some ways to the voice button on um on the Apple TV remote and that you can you can call up programs you can call up series and you can tell it to start playing you can do things like uh say Siri I didn't catch that and it will rewind 10 seconds and turn on the subtitles that that's what Apple TV does uh Fire TV lacks some of that the Google home speaker has always been able to control chomecast devices to kick off programs Alexa now is able to start media and control the the TV in a rudimentary way and for TVs that have Alexa built into to it that are you know basically TVs with with Fire TV built into it you'll be able to control those vi of your voice speaker as well and that works with third party speakers I proved that this week where I took a uh a jam voice speaker which is you know home tics or hmdx product that works with Alexa and I was able to control the TV which was nice I'm hopeful that sir on the homepod will make that kind of thing even easier you know you're talking about controlling in the house and currently I bet if I remember right you've got a Logitech Harmony home hub um combined with home Bridge running on a Raspberry Pi to be able to control your media center and I I want that alwayson experience of just being able to say you know uh Hey Siri kickoff stranger things on Netflix and have it start yeah I think that um it's not going to be there when it launches but if you look at the capabilities the homepod um through some digging of the firmware that was released um developers found that it's going to have a g a full gigabyte of ram so you don't give it a full gigabyte of RAM for a speaker with a tiny display uh without the intention of opening it up to third parties and uh potentially a homepod app store or something so uh I would imagine that that's going to be a 2018 thing um but again a lot of horsepower in there um and that will not only allow Apple to keep the product on the market without any updates for a few years but also expandability well similar to The Watch right when you bought an Apple Watch you didn't want it to be obsolete the first year out and by buying you know the same thing is true of the Apple TV we bought these Apple TV 4thg and we don't want to be obsolete the first year maybe second year is possible right and then the same is true of a homep pod if you're spending $349 on the speaker you don't want to have to replace and I think that the the Apple watch was a different situation too because of the size of it and the fact that it's relying on battery power and whatever uh they had to cut some Corners they certainly could have put in more more processing power but uh needed to be concerned about battery life with the homepod they don't have those same concerns it's going to be plugged into the wall it's got plenty of space to work with they don't have to wor about cooling it or battery life or anything like that so they might as well put in something that goes above and beyond uh what it needs to do and and even if it starts which I think it will uh running third party apps integrate with Syria at some point um it's still going to have plenty of overhead to handle that kind of stuff first first of all the developer in question that we learned all the stuff from is Steven trouton Smith yes and uh Steph's been poking at this stuff off and on for years and uh he he does have some apps that are on the App Store that are not related to poking into these things right he had lights off which was a game um he's the person behind one of the two people behind the grace app and Grace is a uh an assistive device for people who are non-verbal to be able to speak by arranging icons and sentences um using something called PEX Picture Exchange so you can uh you can arrange pictures into sentences to communicate kind of thing of course he's always interested in doing this stuff as a sort of side habit side gig he discovered a bunch of stuff about the rumored iPhone 8 you know there's a uh the idea of being tapped to wake um we've talked before about how there's going to be sensors in the middle of the top of the screen as opposed to this this completely bezeless device and so the status bar is split on either side of them and he found some confirmation of the bezeless design of the iPhone facial recognition he even found the resolution of the display and icons for the forthcoming device for those keeping score at home it's going to be a 2,436 X 1125 display it's going to be higher resolution and smaller than the 5.5 in iPhone 7 plus which means higher pixel density which potentially means better use for uh virtual reality applications as well it's it's really going to be interesting um it's going to have a what a 5.15 in display so yeah this is where it gets a little confusing because the display is supposed to be 5.15 in but the total display area is suppos to be Clos to 5.8 in and where you're getting that extra 6 in or so uh is supposed to be a um for lack of a better term touch bar area uh basically the lower tenth of the screen uh will be where the home button used to reside and that will have some sort of a virtual home button um and potentially maybe menu options to the left or right of the home button or something like that um but the belief is that the bottom portion of the screen uh will not not necessarily be available to developers to fill up or not necessarily encouraged to um which will then allow that to serve as some sort of a system function area for uh one of the concepts is being put out there is instead of having the back button in the top left corner when using apps or uh the the the system wide back button uh where the carrier name goes uh putting in the lower left corner so you don't have to stretch your thumb up there to get it anymore uh because it'll take up this lower part of the screen which will be reserved for menu type stuff um what will be interesting to me to see is how these two supposedly separate displays on there are blurred like for example um if I'm watching a video is it going to be relegated to the 5.15 in area or is it can be able to bleed over and take up the entire screen I would think that given that Apple gives developers the ability to get rid of the uh the menu SL whatever bar at the top whatever it's called um on the iPhone um I would imagine that certain apps and status bar thank status bar um I would imagine that certain apps and certain situations would be given the right to take up the entire screen so if you're watching a video you get that much more uh space out of it but we don't really know that yet we we do know that the screen size that was uh discovered in the firmware by uh Steven uh matches exactly with what everybody's favorite analyst Ming quo said earlier this year uh the numbers are identical and he was the one that said that there was going to be the additional area of the uh the function row slouch bar whatever you want to call it so um I I think that everything that we saw in that respect from the supply chain back in February is going to prove accurate as has been seen through these leaks uh the design has proven accurate um there's a icon uh giving a kind of overview of what the iPhone 8 displays still look like that was found in the hod firmware and as expected it's going to have a little uh indentation chin whatever you want to call it forehead um uh up at the top of the screen that will um cut in and allow the earpiece and forward- facing cameras an infrared sensor that sort of stuff to be there and then the the brow and uh then to the left and right of it um it will uh extend up slightly and then that will have enough depth for the uh what did you call it the the what bar the status bar uh so imagine with an OLED screen um you still have your carrier uh to the left of the status bar and Wi-Fi and all that um and then on the right side you have Bluetooth and what have you um and then in the center of it would be the earpiece and and camera and all that but you wouldn't be able to tell which part was screen and which part was just the the surface of the phone because not only is the olded display it fused to the glass so it looks like it's right on the surface but it's also because it's led the blacks are true blacks so they'll match the perimeter of the phone so we talked about this a few weeks ago where we were asking you know if they made a white iPhone 8 would they have a white or any other color for for that matter would they have a white front to the screen like they've had on phones to date and this is why I don't think that they'll do it because it'll actually blend in with the UI right because you'll have these black borders and perimeters there that are not meant to look like they're part of the screen they're just meant to be uh part of the phone essentially and they're kind of blurring the lines now now first of all hold on first of all Apple allows developers to change the background of the status bar and invert the colors right you you can have when on a white screen application you can have a status bar that has a white background and black uh black writing black text black indicators on the um whereas on a normal screen or black screen you you get white indicators or a colored background so it's possible that they could e either either remove that functionality and just have that portion of the status bar always be black with white text white white uh indication or they could have the firmware recognize the device that it's installed on and always have the appropriate colored background for the status bar to match the colored brow where the sensors are yeah it'll be interesting to see what Birch they take and they already do this to some extent right if you when you turn on a white faed iPhone you get a white screen with a black Apple symbol and if you turn on a black faced iPhone you get a black screen with a a white Apple logo so they already recognize the different hardware and are able to do that to match the screen right so you know I I think that um it does make some sense there but um given and and maybe that would work maybe the white background maybe you're right maybe white background up there would work I think that the reason that I'm thinking of it is is just because um the uh the dark the blacks on OLED are true blacks so it would it would blend in with the edges of this display so it seems to make the most sense to me but the question is how badly do they want to hide those borders yeah and it jibes with the rumor about less color yeah that and that would make sense you know the need to figure out how they want to do it is it going to look weird to have a black front glass display with a gold uh glass back uh it may not it may not work um and and there may be some changes to the user interface in how it works you know um having the the top bar turn blue when location is being used um or when uh you're tethering and something like that uh maybe those right the red for recording maybe those functions are going to change in some way uh because of the design of the phone uh something specific to that model we still don't know what's going to become of touch ID we don't we don't even know what's going to become of the the time being displayed at the uh at the top of the screen developer Gom Rambo found strings related to the detection of facial expression so features like Smiles frowns uh puckers and dimples are there um well I think this was interesting a lot of people miss the point kind of on that um the smart cam feature yeah um and they just read it oh you know this is like HDR and knows to turn on and off based on the lighting or something like that if you look at what Apple's already done with machine learning in in iOS for years now and we've talked about this and and we've written articles about it this is one of the Lesser known features of the photos app in iOS that you can search for virtually anything you can search for dogs you can search for chairs you can search for beaches mountains um you can search for snow um whatever the ocean um and it will find it you can search for cucumber or uh avocados stuff like that um and because of Apple's machine learning algorithms and and object detection and that sort of stuff it finds this stuff like instantly in your phone it's pretty crazy and so it seems like what they're going to be doing here is taking that knowledge that they have with object recognition and applying it in real time to when you're shooting a photo on the camera itself and so imagine that um you know it knows that you're taking a up close photo of a person so it automatically go goes into portrait mode for example and gets you that shot or um it knows that it's a shot of uh you know a concert and so it's going to up the brightness greatly because it's dark in there or lower shutter speed or whatever there're all kinds of things that it could do on the Fly because it knows where you are and what you're doing all right uh let's let's for our listeners because some of our readers had questions about this um we need to explain why a homepod firmware has details about iOS devices that are not released yet so we need to explain for our listeners how a unreleased firmware for a device that's going to be released about the same time as we expect the phone to be released has details about this unreleased phone product well the underlying code is the same and so um iOS when it first came out it was the iPhone operating system Apple boasted that it was based on the same underlying code as as uh Mac OS at the time OS 10 um and as iOS has grown over the years it's kind of become its own thing uh it has the same basic underlying code base but it's really its own thing and so now as Apple builds new platforms it's building them off iOS so TV OS is based on it watch OS is based on it and now whatever they want to call the homepod OS is based on it um and because it's running an A8 chip um it shares a lot of code with iOS and so this is the same reason you know you'll see different firmwares if you were to download the ipsw files for a iPhone or an iPad or whatever they have different tweaks for the different Hardware different capabilities and whatever but there's always been evidence of features for other devices or even other Platforms in iOS because the same basic code base which is why um in years past we found evidence of new features in forthcoming iPhones in firmer releases for current iPhones so like before 3D touch came to the iPhone we saw references to it in iOS releases for devices that were not capable of 3D touch and so you're seeing the same thing this year but um I guess they just didn't carefully enough remove the things that need to be removed from the homepod firmware and so there's a ton of evidence in there regarding what's going to be in this Fall's iPhone 8 um references to things like the cameras facial recognition uh the interface charging you name it yeah and the other question is where did this firmware come from where where is this homepod firmware that was um you know it it seems to me that it escaped out of coperino how did it get somehow ended up on their server where they host firmware files for developers and someone found it hanging around on the server and it was there for like a whole week and anybody could download it and take a look and so these developers downloaded it and just started poking through there and just started finding these things and presumably it was mistakenly uploaded because the first of all you can't get your hands on a homod so I don't know why they need to get the the the software out there for it anyhow for developers but also these same things are not included in the iPhone or iPad iOS 11 firmware that's out there um those software updates just don't don't have this information so they're more more carefully cleaned uh before they before they're shared or that the uh the iOS 11 build that will come around the time of that phone will be a point release update for all that's what it supposedly is yeah it's like an 11.0.2 or something there's there's a lot of information here uh what else did we discover discover from this thing well um we talked about the smart camera that's one that I'm pretty excited about um some of the other ones here were let me look through the facial recognition um to unlock the phone um is also going to be used for Apple pay um lending Credence to the suggestion that perhaps the there will not be Touch ID on this phone um either on the back or embedded in the display um so you'll need to look at your phone to unlock it and and as we've talked about before that raises a lot of questions about user interface and how well it will work and how secure it is some of the rumors out there are that it might be more secure than Touch ID because it'll use more points of recognition than you would have on a fingerprint um and also more convenient because you would not have to press a certain place on the phone you could just look at the phone Etc um as I've said before I also see that creating some usage problems in terms of uh Apple pay and your phone not being within range of the camera um and also potential security issues where somebody could just physically pick up your phone and hold it up to your face and then unlock it whereas uh you know otherwise it might be a little more difficult for them to get your fingerprint on there um but I don't know how those issues will be addressed and I can't really dismiss or uh complain about them until the device is announced they're just you have to think of them as interesting questions that I have as we await the iPhone 8 announcement yeah so I want to take a step back and talk about the iPhone 7 plus you you've talked before about Vic kotra and when you were talking about him last you were talking about him in reference to an Apple watch band that he was working on and in a Facebook post on Sunday uh Vic talked about photos that he'd taken and people commented on the fact that he was using an iPhone and he responded and I'm just going to read his response he said here's the problem it's Android Android is an open- Source mostly operating system that has to be neutral to all parties and this sounds really good until you get into the details ever wonder why a Samsung phone has a confused and bewildering array of photo options should I use the Samsung camera or the Android camera Samsung gallery or Google photos it's because when Samsung innovates with the underlying Hardware like putting in a better camera they have to convince Google to allow that Innovation to be serviced to other applications via the appropriate API that can take Years also the greatest Innovation isn't happening at the hardware level it's happening at the computational photography level Google was crushing this 5 years a ago they had auto awesome that used AI techniques to automatically remove wrinkles whitened teeth Advent yeting but recently Google has fallen back Apple doesn't have those constraints they innovate in the underlying hardware and just simply update the software through the latest Innovations like portrait mode and ship it bottom line if you truly care about great photography you own an iPhone if you don't mind being a few years behind buy an Android a lot of people responded negatively to Vic because they they held up how great the pixel camera is they held up the dxo mark ratings of Android phones but the point is that viondra is talking about the entire experience from Hardware lenses all the way to the software not not just the quality of the camera or the quality of the photo in daylight or whatever you know whichever the things that dxomark is scoring on and dxomark when they score they have a range of different things and then they come together to average to get to a point score so it could be that the iPhone excels at many of the things but the pixel gets just a few right and they waited for those few for the Android phones to uh to succeed at the dxo marks to to out paste the iPhone of dxo Mark gandotra before he was doing his own product his own company he was the senior vice president of social networking services at Google that is basically behind go+ and Google+ photos did things like understand what was going on in your calendar and things You' invited other people to so that you could have photo albums created automatically for you out of social events right they understood that you had a birthday party on your calendar that it was taking place at a location and when everyone else that had been invited to the event showed up at the location and was taking pictures all of those photos would work together and then Google would be able to create the kinds of uhu group albums that said remember what was going on a year ago here's the party with all the photos from everyone else which still hasn't been replicated anywhere else mhm to my knowledge but that was something that was easily 5 years ago and it's hard to think about what Google has done since other than try and put stabilization into the pixel which is computational photography but what else are they doing you know I I know people that argue for taking Android completely private source to to make it not open source and I think those people miss the the point that it's never going to quite happen the other thing that people talk about is Google's work on a replacement operating system called fuchsia and that's something that we we've slowly seen develop uh one of these things is going to happen Google's either going to replace Android with fuchsia or Android is going to have to change in order from the there're always going to be especially when you're dealing with Android or or even Windows there are always going to be devices out there that do certain things better um it's it's hard to find a device that does everything better it you know you may have a higher quality camera a higher quality lens or or what have you um you may be able to download better apps to control your camera even on the iPhone uh you know people have the you know people like to use camera plus and some of the other options out there but really when you get down to it when you just set up a phone and start using the camera app you're going to be hard pressed to find a better experience than on the iPhone and that's what Gonda was talking about especially now with portrait mode which he was especially in Praise of just how easy it was for him to get these DSLR mimicking shots of his family in a very high quality cinematic look um and it was just so easy for him that he just doesn't want to mess around with any Android phones and and I understand that I feel the same way those are the stories we have this week there anything else you wish we' covered and listener if there's anything you wish we'd covered that we didn't mention please go ahead and reach out and contact us we'll spend some time on it I I guess for the third week in a row I have to mention that I wish we' talked a little bit about a carplay but I'm going to put that off one more time and and not because I I want to keep teasing it out like that but because I'm getting ready to install a wireless carplay head unit into my car and we're going to have a full review of it and we'll be able to talk knowledgeably about what we're doing with wireless carplay and how that fits into changing the automotive landscape we'll hear all about that and more next time on the Apple Insider podcast we will see you all next week thank you so much for joining\n"